As a high school student, I see my classmates come alive when they’ve engaged in artistic expression of some kind. Whether it’s writing, dancing, acting, painting or performing their interpretation of something, they’re in the act of creating and expressing. I see the spark of their inner spirit allowed to play in free form. I’ve also seen the opposite—when something they’ve looked forward to crafting is threatened or taken away. Their animation of spirit seems to lose air, like a dampening wash cloth on a flickering candle.
We all truly are the artists of our lives, and we learn more about what that can look like when we are allowed to engage that creative artistry within the institutions of education. Some of our nation’s youth are fortunate to be able to afford private school, or private or community classes and programs where they can learn and express their individual artistry. Many, however, do not have that advantage. It is this gap that education can not just fill, but expand, articulate and enhance for the youth of our communities and the nation at large.
It is the responsibility of our school districts to provide opportunities for developing this inner artistic exploration. Art should never be viewed as an elective or supplemental provision, but a necessary curriculum of disciplines offered to all students at all grade levels.
Research has shown that art education enhances our mental-emotional well-being, inspires us to attend school and lowers absenteeism. Artistic expression is not merely aesthetics. It is a mental-emotional-physical practice that shapes a cognitive framework and engages us in divergent thinking,
Addressing the current administration’s proposals for district budget cuts, artistic education is a long-term investment in the molding of the individual, not a short-term solution to funding issues. The arts are a vital asset to the cultivation of our ability to create and contribute to ourselves, our communities and the world. Let it not be forgotten the nation’s “Every Student Succeeds Act” governing K-12 public education, signed at the end of 2015, explicitly includes the arts as part of a well-rounded education.
Inherent in the passage of this law was the wisdom that creativity and play—aka “art”—automatically ignites our interest in engaging in academics. It naturally elevates our abilities to learn and shape the outcomes of our efforts.
Knowing this, the act supports the integration of arts into other subjects, providing funding of grants for Title I, II, IV, and Assistance. Congress clearly comprehends the importance of funding for arts and education, voting against the proposed cuts in Education Week FY2026 and supporting a budget in February of 2026 that sustains Arts Education Support Assistance.
All forms of art—be it theater arts, visual arts, music, dance, and media arts, and their individual disciplines and mediums—make a difference. This difference is not just the student experiencing a course or program—or not. It is the difference between the student’s aliveness and expansion, or listlessness and apathy.
Art in schools has forever been presented as a “special” elective. That viewpoint is archaic. Today’s youth must be supported in ways that prepare us to face and shape our increasingly fast-paced, explosive global climate. The arts, as an integral aspect of a well-rounded education, will equip us to do just that.
